In a client-server computing system, a computer application or program that is running on one computer (i.e., the server) may be accessible to another computer (i.e., the client) over a network, such as over the Internet. The user interface running on the server is exposed and visible to the client. In this way, the client has remote access to the server and the user of the client device can interact with the application that is running on the server. Single sign-on (SSO) capability is a feature that may be beneficial in client-server computing systems. SSO is a method of access control that enables a user to log in once and gain access to the resources of multiple software systems without being prompted to log in again.
In certain client-server computing systems, a web application is used as the gateway into the system. Namely, a web component that is accessible via the Internet is used as the gateway that controls access to the host and to resources installed and running thereon. Using the web application, the user authenticates to the gateway server. If, for example, the gateway server is implemented as an operating system (OS)-specific application, the user authenticates to that OS-specific application. In this example, the OS-specific application may include mechanisms by which the OS may share the user's security context and automatically authenticate the user on other computers that are members of the same domain. However, a drawback of these single sign-on mechanisms is that they do not necessarily work well between a web application and the OS-specific application. Namely, there is no protocol to share user security context between a web application and the OS-specific application. As a result, this scenario will require the user to sign into the web application and then sign in again to access the OS-specific application.